Congratulations on surviving one more turn around the Sun…see you all in 2024!
Happy Holidays!
December 28, 2023
NASA — send in the cats!
December 20, 2023
Aiming the laser at the spacecraft so the transceiver knows where to point back is the most difficult part, Wright said. And because Earth and the spacecraft are both moving, the lasers must point to where the destination will be in a few minutes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/19/nasa-laser-video-streaming-space-mars-cat/
“The beam’s so narrow, it can’t just point to Earth. It needs to know exactly where on Earth,” Wright said. “Trying to hit a dime from a mile away while you’re moving at 17,000 miles an hour — that’s the challenge.”
So NASA has been working on this idea for a while now. The invisible laser beam that carried this video file came from the Psyche probe, on its way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Psyche is 19 million miles away right now. The laser beam took 108 seconds to reach Earth.
Mars and Earth are on average 140 million miles apart and can be up to 250 million miles apart depending on the timing of their respective orbits.
I don’t think lasers are the answer here. A good start, maybe, but you can do the math. Having to wait between 10 to 20 minutes, or more, for a one-way transmission (double that for an exchange of messages) would not be ideal for a human settlement in an emergency.
Star Trek style instant interstellar communication is still just scifi. Unless there’s still something out there we haven’t found yet, even quantum communication will take time…
But at least NASA has finally realized that non-science people like cat videos.
🐈 🐈⬛
Dear Diary – November 9, 2018
November 24, 2023
[Context: my mother had just passed away, and I was remembering that both my parents’ choice in reading materials influenced my own fictional likes and dislikes.]
I guess both Mom and Dad liked Trek from its inception [in 1966]. I remembering watching the original series (in syndicated reruns of course) in the late ’70s/ We saw it in the “TV room” in my grandparents’ house….They had a color Zenith; we only had a tiny black and white on a bookcase. I remember being fascinated by the bright reds and blues (this was the point…color TV was new in the late ’60s and the sets and costumes deliberately used bright primary colors)…
Mom had all three “Star Trek Readers” I through III, by James Blish….Later I would borrow more complicated science fiction / fantasy stories from my Dad — Frank Herbert’s Dune and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land stood out. And of course, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, which were televised when we lived in Berne [a small village in New York west of Albany]. Once I discovered [The Chronicles of] Narnia and The Hobbit in 3rd grade, it was all over. I was a nerd for life.
And now look at the influence on pop culture. Movies, books, music, clothes, shoes, bags…the Internet and modern media. Smartphones. Tablets. Skype. Wireless devices. Bluetooth. GPS.
Nerd-dom has conquered the world. And my mom got there first. Way to go, Mom.
Meet the man who was Shatner’s eye
March 28, 2022
www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/22/star-trek-movie-shatners-eyeball/
The iconic “retina scan” scene in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan was not Shatner’s own eye.
It was an “eye double” software engineer.
(As the man himself says, your iPhone can take a more detailed picture these days, but it was high tech for 1982…)
Happy New Year 2022!
January 1, 2022
Happy New Year, everybody!
My New Year’s resolution: to finally finish the first draft of Bringer of Light and get the editing done by summer.
Thanks for reading this blog. Best wishes to all of you for a safe and prosperous 2022!
Frogs embryos turned into xenobots
April 12, 2021
Using blobs of skin cells from frog embryos, scientists have grown creatures unlike anything else on Earth, a new study reports. These microscopic “living machines” can swim, sweep up debris and heal themselves after a gash.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/frog-skin-cells-self-made-living-machines-xenobots/amp?__twitter_impression=true
The possibilities are endless…
Warp drive is no longer science fiction
March 2, 2021
“Many people in the field of science are aware of the Alcubierre Drive and believe that warp drives are unphysical because of the need for negative energy,” said Alexey Bobrick, scientist and astrophysicist at Lund University, according to a press release. “This, however, is no longer correct.”
https://interestingengineering.com/warp-drive-not-science-fiction-faster-than-light-travel?fbclid=IwAR2v4FPzkA90L_yPIZVt3zfY3-jnA0jqvwOgJmHFNdsxlxDxcUJLF8Bg6Gg
There can be only response to this news…
Far Beyond the Stars — 1953, 1998, 2021
February 9, 2021
On February 9, 1998, Star Trek Deep Space 9 broadcast one of the most important episodes in the entire history of the franchise.
And what it said about society back in 1953 was just as relevant as for 1998. And perhaps even more important for 2021.
Others have written more eloquently about the plot line, the characterizations, the background, the actors (Avery Brooks directed himself, and his performance should have earned him an Emmy). So I’ll just link to:
Avery Brook’s “proudest moments” interview
DS9 Season 6 Extras – the actors speak (Armin Shimerman calls it “perfect science fiction”)
Star Trek Official Website: Remembering “Far Beyond the Stars”
Reel World Theology’s Trektember
Man, what a pain…
December 4, 2020
…researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have created an artificial skin that mimics this mechanism and reacts to pain stimuli….
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/02/health/artificial-pain-sensing-skin-spc-intl/index.html?__twitter_impression=true
Once again, Star Trek was way ahead of its time…
No, that’s not it. Wait…
Yeah, that’s it.
I, for one, can’t wait to greet our artificial skin-covered overlords…
Micro-Voyager goes where none have gone before…
November 8, 2020
“By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers,” Samia Ouhajji, one of the study’s authors, told CNN. “This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/08/us/star-trek-3d-microscopic-spaceship-scn-trnd/index.html
Another once-science fiction concept turned reality…
…until the next fantastic voyage(r)?
